A reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle capable of delivering 12,000 pounds of payload at a distance of 9,000 nautical miles … in less than two hours. The House and Senate conferees wrote, “Enhancing these capabilities is critical, particularly following the Chinese anti-satellite-weapons demonstration last January.”

Hypervelocity Rod Bundles, or “Rods from God,” 20-foot-long, one-foot-diameter tungsten poles (existing only on paper at this point) that would be hurled from low-Earth orbit at 25,000 miles per hour to pulverize “hardened” targets in enemy territory.

I always look forward to the annual Pacific Telecommunications Conference, held mid January in Hawaii, since it generally seems to meet right in the middle of a major satellite or transoceanic fiber disaster.

NASA’s Messenger (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft will make the first extraterrestrial visit to Mercury in almost 33 years when it zooms by the barren planet on Monday, January 14. Messenger’s long-term goal is to orbit Mercury, but that won’t happen until 2011 after it makes several orbits of the sun and three close encounters with the planet, reports C/Net.

Russian and British scientists discovered the existence of Lake Vostok, some 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath Vostok Station in the Antarctic, 12 years ago. The lake contains liquid water under the three-kilometer thick icecap, promising to be the most unspoiled lake on Earth. Cores samples suggest the lake has been sealed under the icecap for up to a million years.